From the article: In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.
The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
That’s not a given because RCS is not a “feature”, it’s a mobile communications standard, a mobile communications standard the network operator must offer and activate in the contract.
And even that doesn’t mean much because over the years Google has repeatedly and consistently expanded RCS on Android to keep up with Apple’s features.
So if Apple now implements RCS, that doesn’t mean that they will also implement all of Android’s proprietary extensions. Particularly as those extensions include end-to-end encryption that Google supposedly offers over RCS, as default RCS is unencrypted.
From the article: In a surprising move, Apple has announced today that it will adopt the RCS (Rich Communication Services) messaging standard. The feature will launch via a software update “later next year” and bring a wide range of iMessage-style features to messaging between iPhone and Android users.
Apple’s decision comes amid pressure from regulators and competitors like Google and Samsung. It also comes as RCS has continued to develop and become a more mature platform than it once was.
Imma say the biggest reason was Carl Pei and his Mac Server Farm threatening to flood iMessage with new users.
All the spam texts I get are a green bubble. I don’t want them to play nice with android.
That’s not a given because RCS is not a “feature”, it’s a mobile communications standard, a mobile communications standard the network operator must offer and activate in the contract.
And even that doesn’t mean much because over the years Google has repeatedly and consistently expanded RCS on Android to keep up with Apple’s features.
So if Apple now implements RCS, that doesn’t mean that they will also implement all of Android’s proprietary extensions. Particularly as those extensions include end-to-end encryption that Google supposedly offers over RCS, as default RCS is unencrypted.
Supposedly because no one can check if Google’s end-to-end actually works.
This means that anybody who values proven encrypted end-to-end still has to stick with Threema or Signal, as RCS does pretty much nothing on that end.